Craig Pollock: Shifting Gears In Car Racing

"Jean Todt, Ferrari's current managing director, had recently moved to Ferrari, and the car was a good two or three years away from what it is today. He felt that Ferrari needed a driver with sufficient F1 experience, and should Villeneuve falter with Ferrari, especially in the first year of his stint, it would be not good; it would be a fatal mistake almost." Pollock understood that too. After all, he knew that, like money, the right team was just another criterion in the equation.

While the potential of a Villeneuve-Ferrari association would have been nearly euphoric for sponsors, Pollock orchestrated an even greater coup for the young driver. The leading team at the time was not Ferrari — far from it — but Williams-Renault. "It was the hardest negotiation ever; Jacques tested with Williams and the team had 24 hours to say yea or nay, it was the toughest 24 hours of my life, I did not sleep one bit... Jacques, on the other hand, slept like a baby," recalls Pollock, almost laughing about it now.

come on, you know

If you are wondering whether or not Frank Williams bit on the bullet, then I suspect that you've been hiding in a cave all these years. After all, in his first year with Williams, Villeneuve raced neck-to-neck with Damon Hill, his teammate at top tier racing team Williams.

The ensuing year, however, it was current F1 king Michael Schumacher and not Hill who gave Villeneuve a run for his money. The coup de theatre of that year took place, incidentally, in Suzuki, at the very same Japanese Grand Prix where Pollock ran into Villeneuve in the early 1990s, when Schumacher tried to take Villeneuve out, only to force himself out of the race. Inadvertently, Schumi helped Villeneuve claim the 1997 FIA Formula One Championship crown in only his second year with Williams and F1.

For all intents and purposes, Villeneuve stood atop the racing world, and the man beside him was none other than Craig Pollock. Looking around at that point, Pollock needed another challenge, he had, after all, driven his client to the pinnacle of the sport, faster than many had anticipated. It was then that Pollock set his sights on his new challenge: the founding of a F1 race team. This plan was not devised after Villeneuve's 1997 Championship. The embryo for this team was planted back in 1996, in Villeneuve's rookie year and after his first victory, when Pollock was talking to Adrian Reynard, the famous chassis supplier to many of the cars that race in open cart racing. Reynard had already tried, partially in vain, to put together his own F1 team. Reynard argued that he was missing three vital components: an engine, funding, and a driver.

It was then that Pollock knew that he could put forth the motion to one day field his own team. From 1998 to 1999, Pollock built a team from scratch, securing the financing through British American Tobacco, finding the engine and landing the driver needed to compete in the greatest racing show on the planet: Jacques Villeneuve, his client.

For Pollock, the opportunity to launch a new team made sense. If he could succeed, it would be a monumental feat that would project him atop the F1 landscape. For Villeneuve, the rationale may have been different. Surely a new challenge was in order, but one can only estimate that Villeneuve still had his share of naysayers who openly questioned his true abilities. After all, they argued, could he match his performance in a lesser car?